They ded.
Originally Published October 1978
The X-Men are dead. How could they not be? We saw Magneto's base collapse in a molten-hot inferno of death. Only Beast and Phoenix, the two characters whose names do not appear atop the opening-page banner that begins each issue, made it out, and even they are condemned to wander the icy wilds of a blizzard at the bottom of the world to survive and make it home. The odds are low. Surely this is the end: of Xavier's dream, of the X-Men franchise, and of this blog.
Luckily, the previously unconscious Phoenix awakens, and calls out for Scott in a moment of distress, hoping to burrow back into the volcano and rescue her lover. Beast assures her this is pointless - their friends are 100% all dead you know - and they must press on. Luckily, Jean's power burst catches the attention of a passing helicopter (how about that!) And salvation is within reach.
Meanwhile...
Oh snap, the X-Men are in fact not dead, but somehow managed to tunnel out in the opposite direction. And you will never believe where they ended up.
Finally... the X-Men... have come back!... to the Savage Land! Well, I suppose anyone who noticed Magneto's Volcano base was situated in Southern Argentina probably could have seen that coming.
The flying X-people, Banshee and Storm, celebrate their escape from burrowing out of the darkness by taking to the air, and true to the promise of all Savage Land stories, the very first thing that happens is Banshee gets snapped up by
Colossus throws Wolverine at it in an epic Fastball Special. Wolverine relishes the opportunity to cut footloose on the beast with his claws, allowing Banshee to escape and presumably netting a week's dinner for the whole crew.
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| Yeah, sex is great, but have you ever murdered the pterodactyl you were riding in mid-air and ridden it to the ground? |
Cyclops admomishes Wolverine's brazen act (what if he missed?) But Wolverine brushes the criticism off by pointing out that it all worked out. I'm with my fellow Canadian here: good initiative, Logan.
Back home, Jean visits the Professor and Lilandra, to deliver the difficult news that his pupils are incontrivertibly dead. And credit where it's due, even though we know this to be false, and like maybe they could mount some kind of search and rescue, the solemnity doesn't feel unearned.
Back in the Savage Land, the X-Men have been hostelling with one of those generically savage (really kind of racist) tribes you always run into down there. Healing their wounds is easy enough as they indulge in some r&r, treating this sojourn as a mini-vacation.
However, healing their hearts is hard. Storm grieves for her best friend Jean. Wolverine mourns the woman who could have been The One (if only she'd leave her loser boyfriend) and Scott... laments the death of Hank.
In what is honestly a fair complex psychological position to put Cyclops in, he notes how things had truly changed between him and Jean since her near-death in the shuttle crash and subsequent transformation into Phoenix. Was she the same girl he used to know? Scott isn't sure; It's been a busy few months since then. He knows she had changed but never really had time to understand the extent of those changes, and now the woman she became is dead (definitely, right?) So he wonders, can he mourn a woman he never truly knew? Or is he still just mourning the one who already died?
Not to spill too much secondhand tea, but co-plotter Byrne reportedly hated Claremont's take on Cyclops and his emotions here, and resented his collaborator being able to put words in the characters' mouths like it was his job or something. Me, I like this take, but be forewarned, we are going to be seeing it addressed a lot in the coming ten or forty years.
Anyway. Storm goes for a dip, unaware that the X-Men have been watched since their arrival. When she goes missing, the team rushes to her aid only to find...
Yes! Yes! Yes! It's your favourite Mad Scientist Energy Vampire Were-Dinosaur and mine, Sauron! Decidedly not dead after killing himself rather than let his beloved Tanya see the monster he had become. And now thst he's got some sweet sweet mutant juice in him, he's gladly embracing evil again. Good for you, sweetie.
Further Thoughts:
As previously explained, I am all for the X-Men taking an issue to get in their feels about the likely deaths of their friends, as long as we get around to monster dinosaur fights sooner or later. To be able to balance the two in the right proportion would seem, to this humble reviewer, to be the recipe for a perfect comic book.
You might note that Phoenix's first thought is of Scott, while he is unsure how to feel about her. That indicates to me there's a serious imbalance in the relationship, as far as investment goes. But later for that, if and when they discover neither is dead.
Scott also notes that with a mustache coming in, he kind looks like that guy Corsair they just met out in space. And he seems to recall maybe someone who looks like that being his dad, in his early pre-orphan days, and comes dangerously close to putting two and two together, but gets distracted from those thoughts by Storm, who has come to share her grief over Jean and it all flies out of his head.
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| Also, Piotr is 100% planning a three-way with these women. |
My very first X-Men.
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